Liu Ran is teaching at the College of Resource Environment and Tourism, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and her master’s degree from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China). Her research interests include the low-income housing policies, land-use conflicts, China’s urbanization and mobility issues, ‘urban village’ (chengzhongcun) phenomenon and migrant workers’ housing rights in China’s transitional cities, and the new phenomena of rural tourism and innovative space in contemporary China. To date, she has published in the internationally refereed journals (including Environment and Planning A, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Habitat International, Urban Policy and Research, etc.), some Chinese top journals of geography (e.g. Geographical Research), a monograph <Spatial Mobility of Migrant Workers in Beijing, China> (Springer, 2015), and a chapter in the book Population Mobility, Urban Planning and Management in China (Springer, 2015).